With all the excitement surrounding the Zune (I myself was queuing at the Redmond Target store at 8:00am last Tuesday) you might have missed the Office Live launch. Office Live is squarely targeted at Small Business users who require a customer facing website and/or business collaboration portal. With a raft of templates to get people started you can create support for dozens of business functions in a matter of hours.
For customers with CRM needs (this is after all the CRM blog) it does provide some customer management templates. For partners who work with very small businesses Office Live might be a good solution for basic customer management and portal functionality – especially if an on-demand model is attractive to those customers.
For some time I’ve been using a hosted beta version of SharePoint 2007to manage personal information needs. Most complex personal projects (weddings, house building, nuisance lawsuits etc) require document storage, task tracking and collaboration with external parties. I urge readers to check out Office Live at: http://www.officelive.com/freeoffer.
Sorry for the marketing spiel. I not a marketer and I don’t play one on TV. However I’m really excited about Office Live and the direction which Microsoft is taking in this area.